Alibaba has launched a free artificial intelligence chatbot called Qwen Chat, making it available through its website and mobile app stores at no cost to general users.

Developed by Alibaba's Tongyi Lab, the chatbot is powered by the company's Qwen large language model. It functions as a multipurpose assistant capable of answering questions, providing writing assistance, generating computer code, and analysing documents. Users can upload various file formats, including PDFs and spreadsheets, for the AI to process.

As per Alibaba, the chatbot supports over 100 languages and maintains conversation context during chats. Alibaba describes Qwen as a comprehensive AI tool designed for both professional and personal use cases. The company noted that while the basic version remains free, some advanced capabilities may be offered separately to enterprise customers through its cloud platform.

As per a report by South China Morning Post, the app gained significant user interest following its release, with high traffic reportedly causing some service delays.